


Cages

by Merlin Missy (mtgat)



Category: The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Gen, Greek Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 08:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5449733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/pseuds/Merlin%20Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trapped inside cool, toothaching iron, she counts the beats of her imprisonment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cages

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fells](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fells/gifts).



THUMP.

THUMP.

THUMP.

She can hear the witch's heartbeat.

THUMP.

Trapped inside cool, toothaching iron, she counts the beats of her imprisonment.

THUMP.

THUMP.

Immortal creatures have no sense of passing time save when they choose to notice, but immortality is paused inside a box. Time crawls by like deathwatch beetles even for those who should be outside of Her ever-passing kingdom.

Celaeno met Time once, when the world was younger. Her own wings were bronze encrusted with the old brown blood of her prey, and her talons were sharp, and she battled with Time over frozen mountaintops and down to the darkest pits of lush valleys ebbing and flowing with heat from the core of the world. Time bore a sickle in one hand, and she carried the Sun in her other, scorching Celaeno's feathers as the harpy struck again and again.

She doesn't remember why they fought now. She remembers bending over Time to kiss her with bloody lips once, after. But that was long, long, long ago.

THUMP.

THUMP.

She's dreamed the vision of her own release in images she does not yet comprehend: the magician, the darkness, and a shining horn. Her foresight is always truth. She dozes between her dreams and plans what will become of her captors.

THUMP.

THUMP.

Her prey, the only prey she wants to gnaw and rend and crack bones and slurp, shuffles from cart to cart. Mommy Fortuna taunts the new arrival, the bright immortal beast her toy magician has caged, and Celaeno listens to her words, listens to the countdown in her frail old chest.

THUMP.

She's never taken a mate. The company of her sisters was ever enough, full-throated in song as they pounced on their victims, as they wallowed in orgiastic feasts. She recalls as if the moment was just passing the feeling of hot feathers brushing her, the sounds of their cries as they attacked together. Her teeth still chewed phantom gobbets of long-digested meat, gulped from wriggling flesh with still-beating hearts. They only tasted their dainties from fresh, live prey.

Her sisters are dead, like all the legends are dying these days. The Red Bull chased the unicorns into the sea, but the hearts and minds of Man are chasing the rest of the immortal creatures into a more permanent oblivion. She sees it in the faces of the trembling women who stand outside her cage during the shows. She reads the future in the eyes of their tender-fleshed brats, growing every year to love the magical world less. In their coming years will be iron and coal and steel, cages of the soul, and Celaeno will not free herself from their bars. Each day, she sees smoke rising from campfires and cook stoves, and feels another link forged in the iron chain that will drag her to her destruction.

She is too old to fear the ending before her. Fear is for Men.

THUMP.

"Hello, you old monster," says the witch.

Celaeno watches her without speech. They've had their words together. No more need be wasted on a life as brief as this one. She stares at the throat she will rip out. She feels the copper in her mouth. Her back teeth grind visions of the bones she will crunch. She waits in silence.

"Not today," mutters the old woman. But in her slouch and in her turn, Celaeno reads her fear. She's over stretched herself this time. Mommy Fortuna accepted her death when she saw a sleeping harpy perched on a cliff and did not creep by thanking her luck. All else is waiting. All else is a pause. Her paltry magic could barely hold one being of power. She has no prayer of keeping two.

THUMP.

THUMP.

The evening insects whirr and chitter their usual song as the Carnival shuts its draperies for the night. The poor, sad, mortal creatures in their cages murmur and mutter and growl to themselves, wishing for a better dinner, wishing for fresher hay and fresher air as the stench of animal waste settles around them.

The magician sneaks over to the unicorn's cage. Celaeno watches him under her eyelids.

The unicorn's horn glows white.

THUMP.

Celaeno smiles.


End file.
